Saturday, September 22, 2018

The Supreme Court sidestepped the North Carolina gerrymandering case and the 2018 congressional election will be biased there and in several other states. What is Judge Kavanaugh's position on the constitutionality of gerrymandering?

Charles and David Koch

Every ten years, after the census, states redraw the borders of their congressional districts. In most, but not all, states politicians -- the state legislature and governor -- control that process. The number of congressional districts in each state is a function of its population. For example, California, the most populous state, has 53 representatives in Congress while the seven smallest states have only one each.

Partisan gerrymandering is drawing district boundaries so as to give the controlling party in a state an unfair advantage. A gerrymandered map packs opposition party voters into one or a few districts so the controlling party has a small but safe advantage in the remaining districts. Gerrymandering is nearly as old as our country, but it was imprecise and difficult to do before the rise of the Internet. By 2010, the Democrat and Republican parties had compiled extensive voter databases, which mapping software could use to generate district maps favoring their party.

Before and after 2010 gerrymandering (red=Republican control of both
houses, blue=Democrat, yellow=split). Nebraska is non-partisan. (Source)

The Republicans drew gerrymandered maps in key states and it paid off. In the 2012 election, 1.4 million more Americans voted for Democrats than Republicans for Congress, but Republicans won a 33-seat majority in Congress. A 2017 Brennan Center for Justice study concluded that "Republicans derive a net benefit of at least 16-17 congressional seats in the current Congress from partisan bias."

The Brennan Center uses three different tests for significant partisan bias in a state and they found consistent high bias in 8 states, four of which were found to be biased using all three of their measures.

There have been a number of court challenges in these states, most recently in North Carolina where a panel of three federal judges ruled last month that the state's congressional map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that favors Republicans. It is easy to see how they reached that conclusion.

North Carolina voter registration numbers from 2010, before gerrymandering, to 2018 are shown below.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in each year, but what about Libertarians and unaffiliated voters? If we adjust, by assuming that all of the Libertarian and half of the unaffiliated voters favor Republicans over Democrats, we get the following breakdown:

Note further that the Republicans have not tried to hide their bias. David Lewis, senior chair of the North Carolina House Redistricting Committee, and Robert Rucho, senior chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, who were responsible for developing the redistricting plan, engaged a well-known Republican redistricting consultant Thomas Hofeller to draw the map.

Dr. Hofeller testified that Lewis and Rucho instructed him “to create as many districts as possible in which GOP candidates would be able to successfully compete for office” and he complied, seeking “to minimize the number of districts in which Democrats would have an opportunity to elect a Democratic candidate.” Lewis also confirmed their intent in the following television interview:

Using common sense and tests like those employed by the Brennan Center, it is easy to identify gerrymandering after the fact, but harder to generate agreed-upon impartial districts when new census data is gathered. There are guidelines like having about the same number of people in each district, making districts contiguous and compact and recognizing political subdivisions like city and county boundaries, but these are not hard and fast criteria. There is also an inherent tension between the desire to avoid gerrymandering and compliance with the Voting Rights Act that prohibits racial discrimination in voting -- districts must be drawn so as to give representation to minorities.

People move around, so it is reasonable to redistrict every ten years and there is no way to get consensus on a redistricting algorithm, but it is clear that partisan politicians should not have redistricting authority. The Brennan Center study found one political party had sole control (legislature and governor) in each of the seven states with high levels of partisan bias while maps drawn by commissions, courts, and split-control state governments exhibited much lower levels of bias, and none had high levels of bias persisting across all three of the elections since 2010. You can read their recommendations here.

The North Carolina gerrymander was struck down by a Federal Court, but that was appealed to the Supreme Court. The lack of precise gerrymandering criteria led the Supreme Court to sidestep the case and send it back to North Carolina, where it was again found unfair, but there was not enough time to redraw the map before the election. The gerrymandered map will be used in the 2018 election. (The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court redrew a gerrymandered map this year).

If partisan gerrymandering persists, cases like that of North Carolina will continue to be appealed to the Supreme Court and they will eventually make a precedent-setting ruling. Today's Supreme Court is clearly politicized and a decision on gerrymandering would be more central to our democracy than rulings on important issues like DACA or abortion. What is Judge Kavanaugh's position on the constitutionality of gerrymandering?

Last June, the US Supreme Court decided that states, not the federal government, were responsible for legislative maps. This week a North Carolina state court effectively threw out the state’s map of congressional districts, saying it was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander favoring Republicans “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Furthermore, the judges said they were prepared to postpone primary elections should that prove necessary to further litigate the case or draw new House districts, so we can almost certainly anticipate that there will be more than three Democratic representatives from North Carolina in the next Congress.

Maybe some functions were omitted from the test satellites -- for example, they may not have included inter-satellite laser communication capability -- but technical progress also steadily reduces the size of electronic devices.

Might the capability TinTin A or B one day be packaged in a CubeSat?

A CubeSat is a small satellite composed of one or more 10 x 10 x 10-centimeter cubes (units) that weigh under 1.33 kg each. For example, the 3-unit (3U) CubeSat shown below would be 10 x 10 x 30 centimeters (plus a little more for the frame holding the cubes) and weigh under 3.99 kg.

Skyandspace (SAS) is off to an early start. They have three 3U CubeSats in an equatorial orbit and they have demonstrated instant messageing, voice calls, financial transactions and integration with public switched telephone network.

They plan to begin launching a 200-satellite constellation next year and to be fully operational in 2020. When complete, the constellation will serve the +/- 15-degree latitude region and provide personal voice calls and messages and connectivity for machine-machine communication and "Internet of things" applications.

SAS CEO Meir Moalem estimates that the "full constellation of the 200 nanosatellites will cost somewhere between $120 and $160 million,” which, he said includes "the production, launch, and operation of the constellation." They expect that that relatively low cost will enable them to replace 25% of the constellation each year, enabling them to constantly upgrade their technology. (APP Company Research used a figure of $150 million in an independent forecast).

SAS hopes to eventually provide global narrowband coverage with 1,000 satellites, but they are not talking about broadband service. On the other hand, "Internet in space" is the long-term goal of Kepler Communications.

Just over two years after the company was founded and a year after being funded, Kepler had KIPP, their first operational satellite, in orbit -- a testimony to CubeSat cost and development time.

KIPP, a KU-band, 3U CubeSat, is in polar orbit and providing high-speed, global store-and-forward service through their gateways in Inuvik and Svalbard. They are serving customers with latency-tolerant applications like bulk transfer of scientific and video data. (This is reminiscent of the first satellite Internet project I know of -- VitaSat -- which provided email and other asynchronous services in developing nations in the mid-1990s).

The next launches will be CASE, a slightly upgraded version of KIPP, which will add to their store-and-forward capacity and TARS, a redesigned 6U CubeSat that will be used for both store-and-forward and Internet of things applications. TARS will be the final service-demonstration satellite prior the early 2020 launch of the first 10 satellites of their 140 satellite constellation.

Like OneWeb (and unlike SpaceX), both work with partners in design and production of satellites, antennas, radios, etc. and both sound like fast-moving, innovative companies with a sense of purpose -- reminiscent of the early days of both personal computing and the Internet. The "careers" page of the Kepler Web site captures this feeling well. It offers the opportunity to "join the team that's building the Internet in space," recognizes that "a good cultural fit can oftentimes be more important than technical competency when building a company" and lists "indoor bike storage" as one of the perks of employment. I'm ready to sign up!

It's hard to believe that the capability of the satellites companies like OneWeb and SpaceX are contemplating might one day fit in a CubeSat, but think about the phone in your pocket. Also, as the following time-lapse video (1:54) shows, today's CubeSats are hand built -- what would mass-produced CubeSats cost and how many could a BFR launch at once?